Twenty-five founders will take two minutes each on Friday, October 9, inside Santa Clara University’s Locatelli Student Activity Center, and the room will fill with the kind of people who write checks. Ciocca Center’s Bronco Ventures Accelerator will close its eighth cohort with that showcase, then keep the lights on for a two-hour reception. Doors open at 4 p.m. Pitches run 4:30 to 6:30. Food, drinks, and introductions follow until 8:30. Admission is free and open to the public, which means a San Jose engineer, a first-time angel, or a curious neighbor can walk in without a badge from Sand Hill Road.
The companies span healthcare, enterprise software, fintech, construction tech, consumer products, government technology, space, and education. This year’s class pulled founders from every school on the SCU campus and, for the first time in a serious way, from partner Jesuit and Catholic universities abroad through the Jesuit Entrepreneurship Center Alliance. That mix is new. The format is not. Teams spent July through October in a full-time grind of workshops, mentor sessions, and mock pitches, then earned a slot in front of alumni, operators, and investors who already know the South Bay well enough to skip the tourist version of Silicon Valley.
Alumni of earlier cohorts have collectively raised more than $100 million from angels, venture firms, the Bronco Venture Fund, and the JECA Fund. Some later landed at Y Combinator or Alchemist. The accelerator itself takes no equity, which is rare enough in this zip code to mention twice. Program director Cristina Cismas Florea and Bronco Ventures founder Morgan Slain have built the night as both graduation and deal flow. Last year’s Demo Day packed hundreds of in-person guests plus a remote audience. This one sits during Grand Reunion weekend, so the campus will already be full of people who remember the Mission Church and now run product teams in North San Jose.
San Jose readers have a short drive and a real stake. SCU sits on El Camino Real, a few minutes from The Alameda and Downtown San Jose. Founders who raise here tend to hire here, rent offices here, and sell into the same hospitals, school districts, and construction sites that keep this city moving. Bring a card if a two-minute clock makes you lean forward. Stay for the reception if the pitch that mattered was the conversation after the slides.
Questions can go to ccismasflorea@scu.edu. Locatelli Center is at 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara.
Event details and Bronco Ventures programs: https://www.scu.edu/cioccacenter/bronco-ventures/
